Zora introduces social trend speculation platform on Solana blockchain
Zora's SocialFi platform has rolled out an innovative attention markets feature on Solana, enabling users to speculate on trending buzzwords and hashtags that may achieve viral status.
The decentralized SocialFi platform Zora has rolled out its innovative attention markets feature on the Solana blockchain, providing traders with the opportunity to place bets on buzzwords, hashtags, trending topics and ideas that could achieve viral status across the internet.
"Trade what's trending. Take positions on any topic, idea, meme, or moment before it breaks," the newly unveiled Zora platform announces.
Jacob Horne, one of the co-founders of Zora, announced on Tuesday that deploying a "Trend" requires 1 Solana (SOL), which is valued at approximately $85, with this cost structure designed to discourage spam activities. These Trends do not include any creator rewards.
The platform also allows users to create "Pairs" within a Trend, and this feature does include rewards for creators.
A promotional video released by Zora highlighted the $redlight and $coldplunge pairs functioning under the $longevity trend as an illustrative example.
BREAKING: Zora launches attention markets on Solana
You can now start markets and take positions on any trending topic, idea, meme, or moment
— Solana (@solana) February 17, 2026
Early adopters are already actively testing the application, with tickers including "attentionmarkets," "longevity," "cats," "dogs," "bitcoin" and "aigirlfriend" emerging as some of the most actively traded options thus far.
The newly launched attention markets platform allows users to trade both Trends and Pairs in the same manner as conventional tokens, featuring a comprehensive dashboard that provides real-time tracking of user gains and losses.
Following the announcement, the ZORA token experienced a positive market response, climbing 6.2% to reach $0.022 during the previous 24-hour period, even as the wider cryptocurrency market experienced a 1.2% decline during the identical timeframe.
Zora's attention markets debut arrives at a time when prediction markets are experiencing explosive growth, now routinely exceeding $10 billion in monthly trading volume and gaining increasing traction in mainstream marketing efforts.
In parallel developments, Zora published a job opening on Monday seeking an "Attention Economist," describing the ideal candidate as someone who lives immersed in internet culture and can identify "what's next before it has a name" by monitoring cultural shifts across platforms such as TikTok, Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts and X.
Base community criticizes Zora's Solana integration
Some members of the Base community have expressed disappointment over the Solana integration, given that Zora relocated a substantial portion of its operations from its original platform to Base last year and introduced its inaugural token on the network in April.
Additionally, Zora played a supporting role in the July launch of Creator Coins associated with Base profiles, an initiative that even contributed to Base surpassing Solana in daily token creation metrics later during that same month.
Jacek Trociński, who developed the Base memecoin Degen, expressed that it was "really disappointing" to witness Zora's decision to "pivot" and launch the attention markets platform on Solana.
After getting support from the entire @base team for the better part of a year, they capitulated the second the trade changed. Low conviction, questionable morals, rinse users and repeat.
"We had to put up with your… stuff for 9 months, extracted every penny from Base with a broken model and now a final pivot to a pump clone on Solana," commented Apex777.eth, a builder at Veil Cash.
Zora introduced the Zora (ZORA) token to Solana in January, and the platform's X profile location currently displays "Solana." The account has also refrained from posting any content about Base for several months.
Nevertheless, the company has not issued any official public statement indicating a departure from Base. Cointelegraph contacted Zora requesting comment on the matter, but had not received an immediate response at the time of publication.